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The Eyrie
(Continued from page 4)
certainly Stearne deserves greater credence than one writing more than two centuries later.
I call this technicality to your attention in the interest of accuracy; the Weirdisms department is usually correct: this is the first time I have detected what might be an error.
Yours very truly,
Joseph V. Wilcox,
Washington, D. C.
We passed this letter on to Mr. Coye, who replied:
I have spent some time lately trying to track down the source of my statement that Mr. Hopkins was hung and have had very little success. I remember distinctly reading it in an old book of witchcraft and I am certain I did not get the idea from whole cloth. However, this will not satisfy a person who would write in about such a matter and I find in "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" by Sir Walter Scott, published in New York, 1831, by J. J. Harper, the following on page 222. "But the popular indignation was so strongly excited, that some gentlemen seized on him, and put him to his own favorite experiment of swimming, on which, as he happened to float, he stood convicted of witchcraft, and so the country was rid of him." Whether he was drowned outright or not, does not exactly appear. . . . And so it seems since memory cannot be an established fact, I must relinquish my statement in favor of the record and apologize for misrepresentation of facts.
I am still whacking away at Weirdisms and will have a batch of them very soon.
Well, we think that might be regarded as that, except for the final paragraph of Mr. Coye's letter. Those of our readers who have inquired where Weirdisms has got to might take it literally and be looking for some sign
(Continued on page 95)
